Software Engineer Team Lead (Android): iPlayer

Job content

Job Description

Band: D

Contract type:Permanent

Location: Salford

We’re happy to discuss flexible working. Please indicate your choice under the flexible working question in the application. There is no obligation to raise this at the application stage but if you wish to do so, you are welcome to. Flexible working will be part of the discussion at offer stage.

• Excellent career progression– the BBC offers great opportunities for employees to seek new challenges and work in different areas of the organisation.
• Unrivalled training and development opportunities – our in-house Academy hosts a wide range of internal and external courses and certification.
• Benefits- We offer a competitive salary package, a flexible 35-hour working week for work-life balance and 26 days (1 of which is a corporation day) with the option to buy an extra 5 days, a defined pension scheme and discounted dental, health care, gym and much more.

Job Introduction:

We are looking for a Software Engineering Team Lead to help us expand our mobile app teams in Salford. You will have a leading role in an engineering team that delivers an intuitive and engaging streaming experience to millions of audience members every day. BBC iPlayer is one of the UK’s most well-known and loved brands, and we’re looking for passionate team members to join our collaborative, cross-discipline, agile teams. We welcome applications from all, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, social background, religion and/or belief.

To be successful in this role you will need a good understanding of object-oriented programming, clean architecture, and test-driven development. Our Android app is written in Kotlin/Java, so experience with one or both of these languages is essential. We are a small, self-organising and highly collaborative team of engineers, testers, UX designers, technical architects and product owners. We value our engineers, offering regular training and development opportunities, as well as ‘10% time’-allowing dedicated time for self improvement, learning and innovation. We take the time to reflect and improve on how we’re working via team retrospectives and mentoring. We’re a hard-working team who are supportive, care about each other, and promote a healthy work-life balance with opportunities for flexible working hours and a friendly working environment.

You will have a real opportunity to influence the future of BBC iPlayer, and make it the indispensable video destination for all of the UK public.

Main Responsibilities:

People:

• Key role in leading a multidisciplinary team
• Line management responsibilities for 4/5 engineers
• Assisting with recruiting and onboarding new team members
• Mentoring and developing team members and peers to help them to reach their potential
• Inspiring and motivating the team to help them deliver a world class streaming experience
• Help to foster a collaborative and inclusive culture across iPlayer and Sounds

Technical Leadership:

• Building, maintaining and evolving a streaming application used by over 3 million people each day
• Playing a key role in the technical direction of iPlayer
• Advocate new technologies and approaches to ensure our products are industry leading
• Providing domain expertise across the mobile teams
• Ensuring a high standard of engineering excellence within our product

Delivery:

• Work with cross discipline partners to plan and commit to quarterly deliverables
• Work with stakeholders across the iPlayer organisation to align with goals and mission
• Delivering features using agile development practices
• Seeking out new tools and methodologies to evolve our development processes

Are you the right candidate?

Ideal Candidate:

• Have the ability to lead, coach mentor and line manage a team of 4+ engineers
• Have experience working with cross discipline peers including Product Managers, Delivery Mangers and Design Leads
• Be able to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues at all levels in an organisation
• Strong Android experience, with deep understanding of Android app architecture and design idioms
• Proficient in Kotlin and Java
• Strong understanding of OOP, analysis and decoupled design
• Demonstrable understanding of Test-Driven Development
• Experience of source control systems such as Git
• A track record of producing maintainable code within collaborative environments
• Ability to rapidly acquire new software skills and to work with new technologies

Desirable:

• Degree in Computer Science or equivalent
• Experience with both Android and iOS development
• Experience with Continuous Integration/Deployment in mobile apps
• Web services integration (REST, JSON) in a mobile environment
• Experience with Agile/Scrum/Kanban project management methodologies
• Knowledge of Amazon Web Services